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Collector Area

This statement was released by the International Energy Association (IEA). The IEA’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme and major solar thermal trade associations released these new statistics in GWth, rather than square meters. They state this as the reason for the underestimation of the solar thermal capacity. By using square meters of collector area, you’re not using a unit comparable with any other energy sources.

This presentation, made by Prof. Paul Kohlenbach of the Beuth University of Applied Sciences of Berlin, illustrates the status and perspectives of solar thermal heating and cooling of buildings in Germany. The presentation was made at the Mexican-German Chamber of Commerce on September 2014.

This report - presented to the International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling Programme in 2009 - gives an overview of the solar heating and cooling industry in Austria.

This includes an outline of the national and European regulatory environment, and the research programmes used to further technological development in the sector. Austrian public expenditure for energy research is specified as €31,886,023 in 2007, of which €826,852 was directed towards solar heating and cooling.

This is a paper presented by a group of German researchers during EUROSUN 2008 International Congress on Heating, Cooling and Buildings held in Lisbon, Portugal. Addressing the use of heat pump systems with boreholes together with solar thermal collectors, their project - „Unglazed Solar Collectors in Heat Pump Systems: System Concept and Dimensioning” – is linked with Task 44 of the International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme.

The Trainenergy project ran from September 2009 to September 2011, with the objective to produce a training programme about the EU Energy Performance of Building and the Energy End-Use Efficiency and Energy Services Directives for tradesmen in the construction industry. The project was run in Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Denmark. This module presents the best renewable sources that offer heating at virtually zero carbon emissions, solar water heating being the first technology to be assessed.

The solar thermal market in Turkey is shrinking. The produced collector area has decreased by an average of 9 % each year since reaching its peak in 2004 with almost 1.5 million m2. Local manufacturers only produced 1 million m2 last year, according to the statistics of Gunder, the Turkish division of the International Solar Energy Society (see chart below). The association is estimating an additional import rate of 3 to 5 %.